Hands On: PDFpen Scan+ 2.0 (iOS)

updated 08:33 pm EDT, Wed April 1, 2015

by MacNN Staff

Point and scan feature makes this app quick and convenient

From the makers of PDFpen for Mac and iOS comes the newly-updated PDFpen Scan+ which is a way to quickly photograph documents and turn the text into something you can then copy out, email, or reuse anywhere else. The new version now automatically crops photographs, so you don't end up with hundreds of shots of the edge of your desk. It also increases the speed of scanning thanks to new automated features.

Perhaps the mark of good software is that it solves a problem you are having right now. Certainly the mark of good software is that after it's solved that problem, you get extremely grumpy that you didn't have it before. As it happens, we just had a project that involved a very short time in a very big archive, and the only practical thing we could do was photograph 1,000 pieces of paper as quickly as we could. Photograph now, read later: it honestly was the only way even though, yes, it is murder standing there holding an iPhone level for that long. PDFpen Scan+ would not have made that part easier.

However, it would've made the job faster, and it might've made our success rate better.

With PDFpen Scan+ and its new update, you hold your iPhone over the document, and it is the app that decides when to press the shutter button. It looks for the document -- you can see it edge-detecting paper -- and then when it's all in focus, it warns you to hold still before it goes click. Previously, you would have to position the document by eye, tap the screen to focus on the text, then when you were holding steady, press the button yourself -- and thereby jiggle your iPhone. So this new feature is not only faster than all that, it prevents our forgetting to focus -- plus it prevents us adding motion to the iPhone by tapping on it. Effectively, PDFpen Scan+ removes the two biggest jerks from the process.

Once it's taken the shot, it obviously saves it, but then gives you several options, including the one that we now wish we had before: OCR. Tap the OCR button, and the app will process the image it's just taken. You can see it work through the text on the document you photographed; where it recognizes text and can turn it into something readable -- and copy-able -- it covers those sentences and paragraphs with what looks like a yellow marker pen's highlighting. When it's done, you can see an image of the page showing only the text it could read.

That can be amazingly good. PDFpen Scan+ is excellent at OCR, but -- as the app itself warns you -- everything comes down to the quality of your photograph. We did find it hard to get complete documents read correctly, but because it is so fast, you can very quickly see whether you need to retake a photograph or not.

There are alternatives to PDFpen Scan+, including myriad scanner apps such as Readdle's Scanner Pro, but they tend to save images or at best PDFs, they don't typically then go on to OCR the document pictured. That may not be a big deal, since there are apps that will OCR from PDFs -- including PDFpen for OS X -- but it is handy having one application, and very handy that it does this automatic point-and-scan.

PDFpen Scan+ requires iOS 8.0 or later, and is a $7 bargain in the App Store. We spent far more than that on whiskey after our 1,000-page archive marathon.

Who is PDFpen Scan+ for:
Archivists who have limited time with their source material should grab this. Equally, though, anyone who just needs to grab a quick scan, and doesn't have a flatbed scanner about their person, will find this good, too.

Who is PDFpen Scan+ not for:
Um, people with photographic memories? Or if you already have a good scanner attached to your Mac, that cannot fail to give you better results for the imaging -- and you can use PDFpen for OS X for the OCR work.

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